Time Mind Warp

What do you think of when you think of time? You have some time on your hands and your mind starts to warp with questions about time. Is your free time an asset? What should you do with your time? Maybe you’re stuck in a time warp, a condition or process of being displaced from one point to another, but that’s not living. If you don’t keep track of your time, it feels more like a way of life, than a condition or process. You feel the need to make appointments with yourself but once you’re at such an appointment, you’re at a loss what to do. How do you spend quality time with yourself? What can you do for yourself that would feed your soul, nourish your brain, enhance your self-esteem, and alter your life?

The Web Dictionary defines time as the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole. Continued progress of existence? Does this mean that time and progress are synonymous? If you don’t do anything during your appointment with yourself that progresses your life, does that mean you’re wasting time? Are you squandering this most precious of commodities?

Perhaps you need some hard copy; you open the dictionary. Time: indefinite, unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening in the past, present or future; every moment there has ever been or ever will be. Every moment there has ever been or ever will be? You are becoming intimidated. You want to sit back and let God take over the behemoth responsibility of spending your time. The task is starting to defeat the purpose of the appointment with yourself so you read on in the dictionary. Any financial advisor will tell you, if you’re going to spend as asset you must first understand the value of it.

Time: the specific, usual, or allotted period during which something is done as in baking [baking time, 20 minutes]. Do you need to do something with a specific start and end time, measuring along the way so that you don’t exceed the end time? You decide that in order to concentrate on the task, you will need someone to keep time, which doesn’t allow for the aloneness the appointment demands.

Time can be a rate of speed as in marching, driving, working etc. In this version of time the words like quick time, overtime, and double time are often employed so your know nothing you do on this appointment with yourself can involve marching, driving or working because that too would negate the positive benefits.

Webster’s Dictionary states that time is the usual, natural, traditional or appointed moment for something to happen, begin, or end. In this scenario, if you die, your time would be up; if your were pregnant, you time would come; if it was your turn, it would be your time at bat. Let’s look at these options individually. If your time was up God would be there along with the entire heavenly host and everyone who had died before you. This won’t serve your purpose. If your time had come, you would be in a hospital room with doctors and nurses, family members, the father of the baby, not to mention the new life in the room. Being a quinquagenarian, that’s not going to happen. If it were your time at bat, it would involve a number of other members of the team, officials and parents going postal on the sidelines. This presents an interesting visual. The stands of the community baseball field populated with octogenarian parents screaming at each other, the fifty year old players and the Umpire! Ahem, I digress.

Time can be any one of a series of moments at which the same or nearly the same thing recurs; a repeated occasion. You don’t mind this definition except you will still need to find the useful activity that, the participating in, doesn’t defeat the purpose of spending time alone, and merits the repeating of. You press on.

You could be abreast of the times but you’ve always considered people who hold stock in that stuff boobs! You could be ahead of time, between time or even behind time. None of these suit because each causes it’s own brand of stress and intimidation. You could do time, but that is a gigantic waste of life and community resources. You may decide to do something for the time being but that sounds too much like a cop-out.

What if you were to do something at intervals, now and then, from time to time? This is too ambiguous because the purpose of this exercise is to allot a specific amount of time to do a specific activity, for yourself. From time to time just doesn’t cut it. If you gain time, does that mean that you can add seconds, minutes or even hours to the time devoted to self-improvement?

Once you’ve decided on the elusive activity, should you do it in good time, in no time or just in time? Time is something that can be lost or made. If you prefer to think of making time in the slang vernacular, you will have been successful at attracting and having an affair with another person. This is not the solution because unless you were making time with yourself, there would be another person in the room.

The bottom line is, time after time, as you’re passing the time of day, when you have time on your hands, at this time of your life, choose to research time and learn all you can about the making of it, the spending of it, the value of it. For time immemorial, time so long past to be vague, beyond legal memory, take a timeout from your pursuits and briefly rest from the doing of the time mind warp. Employ your own brand of time warp, involving a deck, a drink, a dictionary and a life altering timeout!